Bulls in wolf’s clothing

Pinstripes and power suits were all the rage in Wall Street’s heyday.
AFR

by
Alex Williams

In Martin Scorsese’s new film,The Wolf of Wall Street, it’s not hard to tell when Jordan Belfort, the high-finance hustler of the 1990s, played by
Leonardo DiCaprio
, has officially made it on Wall Street: his suits go from billowy, double-breasted, off-the-rack numbers to lordly pinstripes, complete with a chunky gold Rolex watch, Gucci loafers and a giant red silk tie.

Ah, for the days when greed was good.

Throughout the go-go “Wolf" years on Wall Street, the Gordon Gekko definition of a power suit – think blue pinstripes, shoulder pads, wide lapels, contrasting collar-shirts, and a red or yellow power tie – held a part­icular grip on the psyche of young men like Belfort (those who shared his ambition, ­anyway, if not his contempt for the law).

Caught up in the testosterone-soaked frenzy of a bull market, would-be masters of the universe found that the power suit not only provided the psychological armour it took to survive the trading trenches, but ­signalled, through its sheer gangster-ish cockiness, one’s intention to scrape his way to the top by any means necessary. (Yes, this was a boys’ club.)

Today, the Dow is once again soaring. But on a more sober, post-financial-crisis Wall Street, the dress code for men has steered away from Gekko-style displays of conspic­uous sartorial consumption. Sure, among bonus babies, there is always room in the closet for a $US6000 ($6700) bespoke suit, or 10 of them. But, says Euan Rellie, a New York investment banker with deep ties to the style crowd (he is married to fashion editor Lucy Sykes, the twin sister of Vogue’s Plum Sykes), the power suit is over. “Less is more today. Finance is less brash, and so are its clothes."

Extreme wealth on show

We are a long way from Belfort’s day, when the broad-shouldered power suit, the Lamborghini and the sculptured beach house advertised extreme wealth.

“When you have someone who is incred­ibly successful and has no time to devote to polishing his style, you end up with the 1980s," says Sebastian Tatano-Ramirez, ­creative director at Alexander Nash, a maker of bespoke suits.

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The contemporary equivalent of the power suit, for those who still wear suits on the Street, tends to be sleeker and more subdued, Tatano-Ramirez says. In place of pinstripes is a trimmer-fitting ensemble in solid blue or gray, with narrower lapels and softer shoulders. It may be offset by a narrower tie of a more subdued colour, perhaps even (gasp) wool instead of silk.

While such a latter-day power suit can still command power prices (a top-of-the-line bespoke suit from Alexander Nash costs $US8000) the status cues are ­subtle, Tatano-Ramirez says, invisible except to those versed in the codes: super 120 wool, if not super 150; working buttonholes on the sleeves, perhaps with the final one stitched, rakishly, in a different colour; side tabs instead of belt loops (a suit that truly fits requires no $300 belt to hold up the ­trousers); a playful lining in, say, electric-blue paisley.

“Any external sign of wealth in how Wall Street dresses has been replaced with a desire to look average or normal," says ­Gregory Lellouche, a former senior investment banker at UBS who now runs a men’s clothing website, No Man Walks Alone.

For a glimpse of how it once was, consider the early scenes of Wolf, which are set in the days before the 1987 crash and were exhaustively researched for period accuracy, says Sandy Powell, the film’s costume designer. The young Belfort, a working-class wannabe from Queens, shows up as a junior equity salesman at an august Wall Street bank and finds it awash in pinstripes and navy blue. At the height of the 1980s boom (and, to a large extent, the 1990s boom that followed), bankers and traders morphed into cultural icons, so they adopted a showy gentleman-fop style: French cuffs with shimmering cuff links; suspenders in bold statement ­patterns, like a skull-and-crossbones motif.

Cut loose

The dotcom era of the 1990s swept all that away. In an effort to meet the khaki-clad internet zillionaires on neutral sartorial ground, even institutions such as J P Morgan and Morgan Stanley adopted business-casual dress codes. Cut loose from their stylistic moorings, bankers often defaulted to khakis and blue polo shirts, a look that was quickly derided as the “Blockbuster uniform".

Wall Street casual had no prayer of ­surviving the bursting tech-wreck bubble of 2000. With the easy money gone, many bankers reverted to formal attire – at least, many bankers in so-called client-facing roles, like investment banking and mergers and acquisitions. (Men in sales and trading can often wear the casual trousers and ­button-down look that took hold in hedge-fund culture.)

The Gekko look took another body blow in 2008 and later, from Occupy Wall Street, several bankers say. Suddenly, it seemed either tasteless or personally hazardous to walk around in an outfit that shouted “1 per cent". Wall Street peacocks learned to dial back on anything that smacked of ­capitalist dandyism.

“I haven’t worn a pocket square in years," says one 40-year-old investment banker. “After the financial crisis, the people who are really stylish want to tone it down. People are making adjustments. I’m not wearing a pocket square; another guy is not wearing French cuffs."

In the end, the goal is a look that does not scream “banker", but whispers it. As Rellie says, “Wall Street doesn’t want to show off any more, because no one is listening."